What does family mean to you?

When we hear the word “family” what images come to mind?

Do you think about your parents, partners, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and children?

Or do you think about other relationships in your life that are equally important to you?

How would you describe the function of a family?

Family is ultimately about connection and relationships. Family doesn’t mean the same thing to all of us and takes many distinct forms, and has been impacted by changes both historically and culturally.

The Functional Definition

Vanier Institute of the Family :

Family is defined as any combination of two or more persons who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth, and/or adoption/placement and who, together, assume responsibilities for various combinations of some of the following:

● Physical maintenance and care of group members;

● Addition of new members through procreation or adoption;

● Socialization of children;

● Social control of members;

● Production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services;

● Affective nurturance – love.

The Demographic Definition

Statistics Canada:

The census family refers to a husband and wife (with or without children who have married regardless of age), couples living together (with or without children who have never married, from one or both partners), or a lone parent (with one or more children who have never married regardless of age) living in the same dwelling

The Encompassing Definition

United Nations Year of the Family - 1994 …

the family is referred to as the basic unit of society; it is appreciated for the important socio-economic functions that it performs. In spite of the many changes in society that have altered its role and functions, it continues it provides the natural framework for the emotional, financial, and material support essential to the growth and development of its members, particularly infants and children, and for the care of other dependents, including the elderly, the disabled and infirm. The family remains a vital means of preserving and transmitting cultural values. In the broader sense, it can, and often does, educate, train, motivate, and support its individual members, thereby investing in their future growth and acting as a vital resource for development.

The Emotional Definition

Francis Moore Lappe of the Utne Reader

…Families aren’t marriages or homes or rules. Families are people who develop intimacy because they live together, because they share experiences that come over years to make up their uniqueness – the mundane, even silly, traditions that emerge in a group of people who know each other in every mood and circumstance. It is intimacy that provides the ground for our lives.

Terminology

• A nuclear family is composed of two parents and their unmarried children living in the same household. It is so named because it is the “nucleus” or core around which other members of the family (aunts, uncles, and grandparents) may attach themselves.

In the 1950s, the nuclear family replaced the extended family as the most common family structure. The change came about in part because of increased wages earned by the working class. This increase enabled more and more families to be economically independent and to own their own houses and car.

• A common-law family is an unmarried couple, regardless of gender, with or without children. This type of family is also called a cohabitation family.

• A single-parent family is a family with only one parent, male or female.

• A stepfamily is any committed relationship where at least one of the partners has children from a previous relationship. In the past, stepfamilies were usually created when one partner or spouse (most often the mother) died, and the widow or widower remarried. Today, stepfamilies are more commonly formed after the dissolution of a marriage or common-law union.

• A blended family is a union where, in addition to one or both parents bringing children to the situation (as in a stepfamily), the new couple has had a least one child together.